What Is RescueTime?

RescueTime is a time management &amp; Productivity software company founded in 2008. The RescueTime app runs in the background of your devices categorizing your own activity, measuring and tracking.

RescueTime is a free program with a premium update That enables features and more special reporting like time input that is offline . It delivers a reporting dashboard with your information diced sliced and sorted into useful charts to help you manage your own time.

The app is based on Peter Drucker’s (the famous Management advisor ) maxim that”what gets measured, gets managed.”

RescueTime takes the manual monitoring of time So you actually track your time so that and makes it automatic and painless — you can be conscious of time use.

That said, there are dozens and dozens of Productivity &amp; time management tools on the Internet. What are the actual pros &amp; cons of RescueTime? Here is what I’ve noticed through the years.

Disclosure — I get referral fees from firms Mentioned on this website. Any info and/or opinions are based on my expertise as a customer or consultant to a customer. Web Time Tracker

Rescuing Your Period

To reiterate, RescumeTime is a productivity tool at the Sense that it helps you enhance your abilities. It gathers data about the programs and websites you use, and then creates reports based on that info.

To Begin, you create an account and set up a Desktop app on your own personal computer (s) and optionally a mobile app on Android devices. There’s no iOS app because the operating system prevents RescueTime from collecting the information it needs to carry out its function. Those programs quietly and invisibly track which programs you use and which websites you visit, in addition to the quantity of time you spend on these.

The tough nut to crack is how to make sense of all that information. To get the best results, you have to customize your account from the RescueTime site and tell the program more about what you consider productive versus unproductive action. The further you fine-tune it to your particular conditions, the better your results. For example, someone who works in the financing industry might classify reading financial news on sites including MarketWatch and FT.com as a productivity job, whereas for me, that’s an unproductive use of time.

You can categorize each app and website on a 5-point Scale of very effective, effective, neutral, unproductive, and incredibly unproductive. You could also categorize activity into work categorizes. For example, I record Google Docs as very productive, and that I categorized it as Writing, which will be a subcategory of Design and Composition. Looking at Redfin.com is very distracting when I’m trying to function, and I have categorized it as such.

From the desktop app, there is a simple set of controllers That lets you pause RescueTime for a quarter hour, 1 hour, or till tomorrow, providing you easy access to shifting the program off for breaks or days once you wrap up early.

Privacy

When faced with RescueTime’s proposition–We’ll monitor Everything you do and give you insights about your customs! –some people might, justifiably, be worried about their privacy and the security of information on their hardware. Should you work with sensitive information on the internet or store sensitive information in your own computers and mobile devices, you are going to want to browse RescueTime’s privacy and safety statements carefully.

For everybody else, RescueTime’s privacy policy Contains a summary on very top, only a few condensed lines which are worth reading.

If your concerns are more relaxed and you simply don’t Want RescueTime monitoring you on the weekend, so you have control over the times and days the program monitors your behaviour. You can easily set it to just watch your activity from 8:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. Monday through Friday, or whatever schedule suits you.

Reports

I’ve used RescueTime for decades, and that I don’t check my Productivity reports every day. I love to let the service run in the background so that when I do want to get a better picture of how I’ve been spending my time, a good quantity of information is waiting for me.

While I do go through the reports, however, they are Magnificent. I really like the variety, giving you get multiple methods of understanding your productivity and habits, from bar graphs and pie graphs that show lump sums of action, to line items of software you used.

1 simple but powerful piece of information RescueTime Supplies is an investigation of when during the daytime you are inclined to be the most successful. I wasn’t surprised to see that my mind peaks in the morning and slacks off after 2:00 p.m., as that matches fairly well with what I understand about my habits. If you have never analyzed your productivity, nevertheless, that might be a useful revelation for you, one that might help you schedule your times more .

The longer you use RescueTime Premium, the more applicable the Data becomes, because you can view your data by day, week, month, or year. And as you might expect, you can toggle which days and times RescueTime records your action so that it turns off automatically on weekends, for example. Web Time Tracker

Additional Features

Much of the value you get from RescueTime comes from that which You make of this information and the way you use that data to affect your own behavior. Changing behaviour is hard, but getting rich insights does not need to be.

Among those manners RescueTime makes it Simple to understand how To interpret all of the information that it collects is using a Productivity Pulse score. This daily evaluation, shown as a percentage, comes in calculating the percentage of time spent on very productive, productive, impartial, unproductive, and incredibly wasteful jobs. To be clear, nobody is advocating you aim for a 100 percent Productivity Pulse score.

A RescueTime blog post explaining the productivity Score notes that the score is 67 percent, and the average is 79 percent. The majority of people want to do some work that is not considered”very productive” during daily. The entire point of using RescueTime will be to help you figure out how to concentrate on productive and very productive tasks when you will need to and perhaps save productive tasks for times when your ability to concentrate has been waning anyway.

Productive jobs are not the Exact Same thing as distractions. RescueTime has a smart and straightforward attribute for curbing behaviour, such as getting sucked into distracting sites , too. A feature called FocusTime, when empowered, blocks your ability to access websites for a period of time you specify. It takes a little setting up and personalization, but after it is ready to set up, it’s quite effective. For example, let us say you wish to to finish a record, and to make progress on it, you really need to concentrate hardcore for the next thirty minutes. It can block you from taking a look at email, posting on Twitter, checking sports scores, or other sites and actions, and switch on FocusTime you deem distracting.

The RescueTime mobile program has Automatically silence your phone when you empower FocusTime. Likewise, you can set up other automation with the help of third-party providers IFTTTFree at iTunes Store and Zapier to block or silence additional distractions. By way of example, you may make a rule with IFTTT (it stands for”if this, then that”) that says,”When I enable FocusTime, then automatically set my Slack standing to active.”

RescueTime also gives you the Choice to log time computer Idle moment. Any time RescueTime finds that the computer was idle for many minutes in a row, so it pops up a dialogue asking if you were in a meeting, on the telephone, taking rest, etc, and lets you categorize the idle time accordingly.

Pros of RescueTime

Here’s some of the advantages of utilizing RescueTime Over other solutions. Web Time Tracker

Feature Set

At its core, RescueTime does one thing — monitor time. If you look at it that way, it’s not unique. Technically, you can do that using a spreadsheet or any of the dozens of apps on the internet.

However, RescueTime’s feature set is special due to How it monitors time and what it does with all the information (aka, you you’ll actually use).

RescueTime watches which windows now have Action, looks at times, and the window name the activity in that window. It is always running in the background watching.

Automated monitoring that is 100%, unobtrustive makes RescueTime rewarding. There is not any friction or barrier to tracking time.

Since RescueTime’s monitoring feature solves that Problem, you will have data that’s complete, useful & appropriate.

RescueTime’s other attributes focus on producing their Core feature. Like time-tracking &amp; billing for 15, they don’t attempt to add on characteristics that are complementary. They do not try to enter any side businesses.

They do have a few attributes Using the monitoring Feature in an interesting manner. The Get Focused! Feature blocks deflecting sites and/or apps.

They have alarms and aims that Permit You to decide What you want to occur when X happens — and RescueTime will do that based on what it is tracking.

I also love how RescueTime does Offline Time Tracking. Rather than being required to search and put in it 100% manually, then you select a time period that is unlogged and fill in the blank.

You can customize the buttons to create logging Offline time simple and quick.

It is a minimalist feature set — but that is precisely Making it great. It’s simple, straightforward and well-done.

Pricing and Strategies

RescueTime offers two tiers of support: Lite (free) and Premium ($9 a month or $72 annually ). Organizations or Firms that want to use RescueTime across a bunch of individuals pay the same speed.

RescueTime Lite offers plenty for Somebody Who Has never Monitored her or his period before. The program monitors which websites and applications you use, and how long you spend in or on every one of these. You may categorize each program and site you are using on a Productive/Unproductive scale, and RescueTime generates a few basic reports demonstrating how you spend your time. Lite members can place weekly objectives, such as”spend hours per week on productive tasks and fewer than Y minutes on faulty products.” You can get a report email. For reports, you are limited to a three-month history.

Subscribers get everything in the free Lite program, Plus reports and features, such as an history. Premium also comes with alarms you can enable for when you reach objectives. You can more accurately log time spent away from the computer, noting whether you were in a meeting, on a telephone call, or simply out to lunch. Additionally, there is a Get Focused option, which lets you block deflecting websites you set. Web Time Tracker

Comparing RescueTime’s cost to that of other apps Needs an open mind as programs do exactly what RescueTime does. Qbserve is one and it charges a flat fee of $40.

We can, however, look at more Programs for freelancers who contain tools for invoices. HarvestFree in Harvest is a example. At $12 per person a month for Premium, it costs over RescueTime, but it’s a very clear return on investment since it helps to ensure more accurate charging. How you’ll translate RescueTime’s reports and make better use of your time as a consequence is not as clear.

Another traditional time-tracking app that’s, toggl Popular among salespeople, prices $9 per month, and in addition, it provides you tools for tracking time spent on jobs with the typical end aim of charging clients. It has several integration options for connecting with invoicing services, although toggl does not contain its own invoicing tools.

A Couple of apps are closer to RescueTime in what they have to Offer, such as Slife, even though they tend to have fewer attributes even if they’re free (and Slife is).

Either way — RescueTime is a no-brainer pricing-wise. It is totally free to use.

And when you are saved by the features only 1 hour per month then it’s paid for itself even if you are making US minimum wage.

RescueTime is an investment which makes sense.

App Quality

A common problem with tracking programs of all types is That they have to be on. The”always on” attribute can cause performance problems on laptops &amp; desktop computers. It can cause battery problems on mobile devices.

But in my own experience, RescueTime induces neither. It is running from startup on my Macbook Pro, my Windows PC, along with also my Nexus 5x mobile phone. I’ve never tracked any functionality or battery issues.

It is well-built and lightweight.

I like the fact that the mobile app doesn’t demand Heaps of permissions. It requires access to use data, but doesn’t try to monitor location, contacts, emails, or any of the typical privacy violating permissions apps ask for.

It is quick to install and syncs using an online dashboard. It pulls in data from all sources and crunches on the data if you’re on the Premium plan or from next day on the program.

Reporting

What is the purpose of information if you can’t interpret it ? Web Time Tracker

RescueTime’s reports solves this issue — and in Many ways is the purpose of working with the app.

And on Top of That, you can dig deep into the Reporting with filters and overlays to find out your customs.

It to see the amount of Time that each task happens.

When I trying to find a marketing agency in Atlanta — The time monitored to Instant Messages and Gchats was astonishing. It altered processes not only for me personally, but also my job supervisors.

Now that I’m on my own — I will see the precise time that I devote to jobs that matter. I can build .

And just to reiterate — all the reports are Built-in into the computer software. The Dashboard is really on my default — as well as innovative reports are pre-built.

It’s all seamless, fast and effective so that you Are wasting time.

Integrations

Among the selling points of RescueTime is their feature set minimalism. They do one thing and they do it well.

That said — many people using their merchandise Have software needs. When it’s team time tracking, charging, project management or anything your own time needs do not stop with monitoring, measuring and categorization.

To resolve that Issue, RescueTime’s software Integrates with a massive assortment of software. They have an open API and direct integrations with applications.

Whether you are Time tracking into even a job manager that must collate staff member’s time or invoicing software like FreshBooks, RescueTime will integrate with it.

Disadvantages of RescueTime

Like any software RescueTime is neither Perfect nor can it be the best fit for everybody. Here is some disadvantages that I’ve noticed over the years. Web Time Tracker

But RescueTime’s classes can be away with general News, deflecting sites and research sites’ subdomains.

I can not use the Get Focused! Functionality for any Task which requires research (aka visiting a lot of different websites).

The time that I need smart obstructing Performance is when I’m doing research for a post

There’s a fine line between this really is productive and When I am researching, This really is distracting. It would be good to use RescueTime, but the categories are not true enough for this to operate.

The Main issue is the Block Sites work Is not available in reverse (ie, add certain sites to block). I can only add websites to unblock.

And when I’m visiting websites were blocked by dozen — Adding them becomes the time wasting.

If you are looking for an program that will block Distracting sites — RescueTime isn’t it.

Effectiveness vs. Efficiency

If you do the wrong thing for 18 hours per day, Daily with focus that is perfect — you are doing the thing that is incorrect.

The most important Element in time management is to Work on the things that are right — the 20 percent of time input that will generate 80 percent of your outcomes.

And that. RescueTime Can’t fix that issue.

In certain ways, in fact, RescueTime can hurt your By pushing you towards efficient doing over planning, research and strategy efforts.

If efficacy is your heart issue, then RescueTime isn’t for you. It will only make things worse.

Instead, I’d recommend reading a few of these books.

Summary

RescueTime has been an invaluable tool for me personally. It’s not for everybody and has disadvantages and some attribute quirks.

That said, the best thing it’s provided is perspective. It’s easy to think that you just”work a ton” or are”not addicted to your phone” or”spend so much time composing” or are”hardly ever on Facebook.”

But the information does not lie. And using RescueTime to Get precise time data on your time can assist you rescue your time and put your own life. Web Time Tracker